Gideon’s Army

Pledging allegiance.

Brandy Alexander’s newest
client has been charged with raping his 12-year-old daughter. Alexander,
a public defender in rural Georgia, expects him to tell her why the
accusation is wrong, why he is innocent. Instead, he explains in
unapologetic detail why he committed the rape. “Every case has a
redeeming quality, not necessarily every person,” a colleague tells
Alexander, who simultaneously oversees hundreds of similar cases. In the
documentary Gideon’s Army, screening as part of the
Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival, we meet three such public
defenders. They’re all working in the Deep South, 50 years after the
Supreme Court’s Gideon v. Wainwright ruling established the right
to counsel for those who can’t afford representation. They’re young and
idealistic lawyers challenging the status quo of an overburdened
criminal justice system, and their personal concessions are wrenching:
We watch Alexander count out $3 in quarters to put gas in her car for
the week. Another defender, Travis Williams, tattoos the names of
defeated clients on his back. At one point, his girlfriend visits him at
the office to discuss a contract they signed in which he agreed to
arrive home by a certain hour. Director Dawn Porter’s approach is
appropriately austere, with no voice-over narration. The tone leaves
viewers with the same somber ambiguity the subjects of Gideon’s Army face every day, in their struggle to uphold an ideal of “justice for all.”